he's still stories but there's also the fishermen you could look for in northern japan worsens as reports say a partial meltdown is imminent at another reactor. as radiation levels a bribe the japanese authorities are downplaying the french the people's health the big u.s. nuclear regulatory commission as head says the damage was not troll serious done the trick ponies admit and has told americans in their rage evacuated from the wide terror trade center that the shore excursions are. to leave it is not in military claiming the ground by the rebel forces and while the u.n. security council is discussing a no fly zone over the country a measure many governments of the. next day you want to show the politics

surrounding nuclear energy in japan also america's policy game in bahrain as tensions in the country rise following the latest bloody crackdown by i think it was. it. welcome a lot of show of the real headlines with none of the mercy or can we live in washington d.c. now tonight we'll bring you the latest from japan now a look at the politics surrounding nuclear energy every kind of energy why don't we

have better options then it's finally come to an aunt the u.s. and pakistan have reached a deal on the raymond davis case which involves giving blood money to the families of the victims we'll give you details on the case and we'll find out of this is what justice really looks like these days and violence increases in bahrain and the world is weighing in except for the u.s. so what we expect next from this foreign policy game that never seems to and then it's an emergency at defund n.p.r. or really i think there are some more important things going on in the world is this just the latest example of the right wing trying to take down anything for the democrats might consider important and happy sunshine week it's a time where we congratulate the obama administration for all of their efforts to practice transparency and what this this government is anything but transparent so why is this president being awarded we're going to get to the bottom of all that and much more in tonight's show but first let's move on to our top story. tonight

the world waits and watches the sea of japan can avert a nuclear catastrophe thousands of people living near the trouble focusing on nuclear power plants have been told to leave as radiation levels continue to rise but getting out of japan is nearly impossible as the country tries to recover from the devastating earthquake and tsunami artie's ivor bennett is in japan tonight and brings us this report. these two people he's a kilometer long trying to stockpile get food is left in sendai most shelves are empty now the people here are getting ready to hide fearing an invisible killer radiation explosions at the fukushima daiichi power plant put the country on the cusp of nuclear meltdown one damaged reactors out a casing and the final two reactors have now lost cooling capability to radiation levels near the plant at four hundred times the amount normally absorbed. there is

still spread across the country and part of. it's the same information and footage being broadcast on every channel you have just to guess many things for them and other places you can get them in the japanese sources there's some very strict censorship which doesn't lead doesn't to stand the true picture and that's not helping. while residents prepared to go to ground for a news crews a fleeing this team from new zealand is heading finegan to airport a flight from there to sucker in tokyo are already fully booked for the next two days the exodus has begun here on the west. has already closed. already turning up trying to get on the next available flight out of the country such as desperation to escape. we have to wait until morning to get the next why to harm our of what we have to wait outside but we will because we want to escape the radiation some though have no it surrounds it this was once

a village those who lived here are returning to find there's simply nothing left the devastation just goes on and on. more than half a million people have been left homeless their belongings swallowed up and starts out by the tsunami relief workers are searching for survivors all along japan's ravaged coast what's now a sea of debris fifteen thousand have already been rescued but over seven thousand are still missing and some parts haven't even been reached yet of a chill and a half thousand relief centers are still packed and will be for several weeks it's cold and uncomfortable but this is one of the few places these people can get food and shelter huge parts of the country have been completely wiped out by the threat of nuclear meltdown means there could still be more to come other than it r.t. they got the japan. those in japan are fleeing from the crisis that they're now living in around the world here in the u.s.

crisis mode has already set in in a reaction against nuclear energy and the nuclear industry's lobbyist's have turned on their folds events ok perhaps everyone needs to slow down a little bit perhaps we need to help japan deal with the crisis at hand and leave other policy decisions and reactions until later so that we can really get to the bottom of this issue and ask why we don't have more options safer options when it comes to energy here in the sky so with me is patrick on bart vaughn bargain managing director at quinn gillespie and associates where he also provides for future counsel to a variety of energy clients patrick thanks so much for joining us today like i said you know the media has been covering this story nonstop and we have been on the ground reports but at the same time you have pundits you have energy lobbyists from every side telling you what's bad what's right and you have lawmakers now also reacting saying that we need to put a stop to all of our projects what should we not be making policy decisions in this mode of hysteria when there is so much fear going on absolutely i think your

opening remarks are right on point we do not know the exact cause of what went wrong in fukushima right now and what we need to do is get to a point where we can really articulate the lessons we should be learning from the disaster and see how they apply united states with our current nuclear fleet and we're not going to know about for some time to come sort of jump to conclusions but do we really learn our lessons you know there are some people out there that have been critical of that or say you know after chernobyl how many years of we have and yet we still haven't learned lessons because there's just too much corruption there's too much money involved too you know for to have anyone actually follow regulations try to learn from it well i actually i think a healthy making structure right now we remember a pretty good place the nuclear regulatory commission is a has shown a responsible record over many years of dealing with these kinds of issues and and in. senate for example senator bingaman is chairman of the energy committee i think he's taken a very sober view of this at this point and basically has said we're going to look

into this much more closely and carefully going forward and the president has to clear power as part of our mix and we need to really take our time and get this get the lessons correct so i think we have a good shot what about globally though what if we look at even i you know the i say is this a body that's completely unbiased that's completely independent. you know i haven't had that much experience with i but. i i i am confident that in the in the u.s. we the nuclear regulatory commission has been a non politicized entity and really is responsible for these issues and i think the policymakers around like the congress has really taken care over the years to make sure that they were they were given the freedom to do what they needed to do on the timeframe that they said oh thing we keep hearing right now of course is that you know the dangers we're seeing the dangers and action that come along with nuclear energy that again natural gas isn't necessarily safe or coal isn't safe and

a lot of people are just saying well we don't have any better options all energy poses risks why does it have to be that way why don't we have better options why isn't there more investment and more progress going on right that's a very good question to ask and i and i think the direction that we're going in a policy framework here is to focus a lot more on renewables and we have in the past and and as yet we don't have major disasters coming from solar wind or or other renewables but when you look at the energy needs of the united states and the world it turns out you're going to have to have all these elements in your inner energy mix so you need to address the safety issues for each one but renewables offer a lot of promise both on the safety side and in the clean energy generation so unfortunately does it sometimes take a catastrophe or a disaster. i like this for people to really put all the pieces together to start paying attention and asking questions and i think that's the dynamic of republican

policy is you know what would have the public focused on what are they concerned about no doubt this disaster is going to focus the american public on ok what is our energy next how does nuclear fit into that and how do we go forward now you know i'm just wondering do you think people should really be trusting right now because there's a lot of mistrust even in japan that people feel like the media might not be giving them the full story they feel like the japanese government might not be giving them the full story because there's a need to calm this sense of panic and then who do you look to who do you go to well i think you have to. we need to look to leaders who say let's soberly and carefully examine the lessons from this disaster and by doing it so early and carefully i mean is every governments instinct to automatically not put all the information out there well that's always a danger you know what what the information is the japanese government is putting

out i can't i can't really judge but i think what you will see in the united states is that there will be an effort to bring in experts from japan as well as the united states to really assess what happened why did it happen what are the lessons that we have here and then what changes do we need to make if any to our nuclear fleet in order to ensure that it doesn't happen in the united states by patrick thank you very much for joining us tonight and of course we'll continue to watch this horrible situation as it keeps unfolding in japan thank my pleasure thank you that's a night thousands of japanese residents and visitors are trying to get away from the fukushima nuclear power plant those living outside the evacuation zone have now been told that there is no danger but there are many questions about the accuracy of those reports and the safety record of the nuclear plants at the center of this possible meltdown so who can the public trust artie's even delusional reports from tokyo. with reactors at the fukushima nuclear. powerplants having gone up in smoke fears about a possible meltdown loom large japanese authorities give assurances there is no

imminent threat to tokyo residents but past seven suggests they're not to be trusted completely over many years and you could in the street and the regulators in japan but also in every society every country to operate nuclear power you find consistently that there's a lack of transparency a lack of will. maybe they just think i think arrogantly but that's too much information why should we provide the information so i think the situation in japan is absolutely critical in fact just five years ago the plant operator tokyo electric power company or tepco admitted to falsifying temperature readings for cooling materials and for consumer as early as in one nine hundred eighty five and with the country now facing a major disaster the government will be careful in choosing its words. i think one thing is going to happen here the judge is going to accountable of course the

people they're trying to change here are. also the accountable to other countries and other nations all that much is not in two thousand to the governments disclose that at least twenty nine pieces of damage to the reactor had been swept under the carpet that incident because presidents and some senior officials to quit in scandal in two thousand and three seventeen tepco operated plants ordered to be shut down again because the operator lied about what was happening at these sites so when the japanese officials put on a somber face but give assurances everything's fine not everyone's convinced particularly when the country's already got enough other problems to deal with if you don't have the emergency resources if your input structure has been destroyed and the further you go away from the real. for the more difficult the more diverse the population settlements are the more difficult it is to evacuate you don't want to panic but probably to get them to so for evacuate i may be on with and we put

themselves in harm's way to find thousands of lives on the line such a quality can easily be counterproductive there's a growing distrust among people in japan that the information they're receiving is not our informing us to the extent that we would like to and that doesn't reduce panic it just makes it all the more uncertain when they believe they can't trust only the information they're being as it stands to pen appears to be balancing on the brink of a nuclear meltdown and though the official version of the events implore is everyone to stay calm history shows not all of their words could be taken at face value in tokyo it even goes r.t. . coming up next the latest on the raymond davis case i'll have information on the deal was made between the u.s. and pakistan i will ask is this deal really considered just hits and the violence is on the rise in balmain courtesy u.s.

stance on this issue will hash out with christopher swift of the good. news today violence is what's a game flared up. and these are the images go girl has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to cope orations room today.

the case of raymond davis the cia contractor held in pakistan after killing two pakistani men seems to be over it was reported today that davis was released after the families of the two men who were killed were given blood money and then the case was dropped now under pakistani practices in accordance with islamic law or what you may better know is shari'a that's fully acceptable and so far it's hard to get a clear confirmation reports say that a sum of anywhere from one point four to two point three million dollars was settled on so raymond davis is on his way home safely and a crisis seems to have been averted is this what we really call injustice and who now has the upper hand joining me for a studio in new york to discuss it is contributing of their own legal and national security matters for harper's magazine scott thanks so much for joining us tonight and i want to get your take on this solution some said that perhaps it was the best case scenario had actually been convicted and perhaps executed then relations

between the u.s. and pakistan would have deteriorated completely but at the same time how does this look to pakistanis although taking blood money is within their practice is that really count as justice. well i think the first thing i'd note is that the matter is not over for raymond davis one of the points that was evidently agreed the background here was that he would return to the united states and the american justice department would open its own criminal investigation into this case with the possibility of some action so he's still in some jeopardy evidently but as you note in pakistan this sort of arrangement is common in fact in punjab province it seems roughly half of all homicides in the blood money payments of this sort so it's usual but whether it's really justice that's a subjective issue when no doubt a lot of people in pakistan they're very upset about what happened are suggesting

that the americans bought his way out here and that that's that's an improper solution so it's going to have ramifications for the political situation domestically in pakistan now you mentioned that his troubles aren't over when he gets to the u.s. but what can they really do you know that this is definitely a lurking area when it comes to you know legally do they have jurisdiction the u.s. courts over what a cia contractor did in pakistan. very unclear in fact if he were a cia agent they would have jurisdiction that's clear there's a special statute that covers that with respect to contractors the statute gives jurisdiction in certain cases when events occur on american installations or they occur in that connection with a war of some sort it's not clear whether this is covered so i think very few people expected that the justice department's going to wind up bringing charges of any kind now let's talk about the amount of money as i mentioned it's kind of hard

to get a clear exact number as to how much was given out but it's somewhere from one point four to two point four million that's not chump change that sounds like a lot of money and you know how does that compare to some other dealings that the u.s. has made around the world that civilians in afghanistan are killed and then those families are paid off for the same thing that we've seen in iraq as well. well that's right in the rock in afghanistan there's a department of defense program for ex-gratia payments that tops out at eight thousand dollars which is a very small sum of money actually it isn't really compensatory so this is a special settlement has been worked out in pakistan that is intended to make the families whole it's a very very substantial amount of money by pakistani terms and i think there may be more to this deal than this come out so far certainly there are suggestions being floated in pakistan that the families of the two victims received visas that

they are being given the opportunity to resettle in the united states if they wish and the report of the pakistan media this evening that the total cost to the united states is probably more in the range of ten million although we don't know what goes into that now or you know we're going to sweeten out these deals by adding in something like your family gets to move to the u.s. and we'll help facilitate that. and what's the logic behind it. i think in this case the logic was very simple it was do whatever it takes to get a person who is viewed as a key cia asset out of the country i don't think there was a lot of consideration given to the precedent value of this whole arrangement and indeed i know talking to people in the state department or all of them are quite concerned in fact about the efforts to throw up diplomatic immunity around ray davis and uses justification to get them out because in the end this undermines the validity of diplomatic immunity and the thousands of diplomats around the world

depend on that for their safety and security now scott i'm just wondering hillary clinton said today in a statement that we did not actually pay blood money to these families that someone else did it for us so i'm assuming that means that there's a third party involved but then you know is it still us why is it is in your own eyes tax dollars that are paying off you know scott there excuse me raymond davis his actions well in fact the source of the at the consulate general in the poor told me we didn't pay out anything yet look we expect to get a bill so i'm not quite certain what's what's meant there although i'll tell you their stories that have been circulating for almost a week now that saudi arabia was actively involved in brokering this entire deal and that the saudis were prepared to put out money to make it work to demonstrate their friendship and support to the united states so that could be a piece of the picture now scott very quickly who do you think came out on top

seems to me like the pakistanis kind of got what they wanted right now the cia can't necessarily have spies in there under their nose and they have to come to terms. well i think it's very clear that pakistan's i.s.i. gained ground through this entire process but sources close to the cia today were disclosing that the head of the i.s.i. general pasha had to greg dealings with the cia director leon panetta to work all this out that there was a new modus vivendi worked out between the i.s.i. and cia very clear that cia gave ground to green to give them information about the identity of its personnel working in pakistan and at least general information about the scope of cia operations there those were let me give give ups that the i.s.i. was looking for so certainly they certainly got something on both counts and it's

going to thank you very much for joining us and you know if this story is not over as you say here at raymond davis when he gets back here to the ranks of research thanks. after weeks of protests in bahrain the violence is now picking up soldiers and riot police expelled hundreds of protesters from coral square and bahrain's capital on wednesday using tear gas and armored vehicles at least six people have been reported dead as well as three police officers and the majority shia population is calling for an end to the two hundred year old monarchy of sunni leaders for political reforms for equal rights but this conflict like those we've seen sleet across other countries in the middle east and northern africa could have implications for u.s. foreign policy and geopolitical dominance of the region on monday as saudi arabia led force of more than one thousand soldiers entered the country iran has condemned both the crackdown and the presence of the saudis and as for america well the u.s. navy has already begun evacuating their base in bahrain and u.s.

officials have called for restraint but not chosen a side or made any mention of the saudis troops so how long can this political gain prolonged here to discuss with me is christopher swift a fellow at the university of virginia center for national security law richard thanks so much for joining us tonight pleasure to be back now today hillary clinton is in cairo she's touring toher square and she was talking about how wonderful this is how great the democracy has come to egypt is it a little odd that while she's touring tahrir square they're completely ignoring what's going on in pearl square so she's completely ignoring what's going on in pearl square in fact the secretary of state was interviewed about the situation in bahrain and she used the words wrong track now the words wrong track in diplomatic speak mean oh my god what are you thinking right and the concern here is that what was a domestic dispute in bahrain between the majority shia community and the majority

sunni lead has now become a regionalized dispute has become regionalized dispute with the intervention of the g.c.c. primarily led by the saudis and with the predictable i should say a reunion real. ponce to that intervention the difficulty here is that not only is are the bahrainis on the wrong track and the saudi is on the wrong track but if this is allowed to continue in its current form we could see the iranians on the wrong track as well and that bodes well for nobody at all but the saudis are one of our key allies right so you have to question how the u.s. really feels about the fact that they are you're lacking a bad place they key allies but come on let's admit it we're very friendly with these people so how does it play out for us that the saudis are not intervening. that they think we aren't going to say anything or some of said quite the opposite it's a slap in the face because robert gates was just there last weekend talking about the need for this to calm down and the day he leaves or the day after he leaves the saudis rushing with troops you know one of the difficult things in

a relationship is even if you have a good relationship you have disagreements and sometimes those that were disagreements are about fundamental things and sometimes those disagreements are about tactics and strategy or the preferred approach or the timing of a particular initiative so i wouldn't say that our alliance with the saudis strain or saudi arabia is strained by virtue of this particular incident but i would say there's a pretty serious discontinuity here between the scripts that the saudi leadership is running when they're looking at the situation in bahrain and the scripts that the u.s. government leadership is running when they look at the situation on bahrain and let me let me give you a sense of how that worked out work breaks out in one thousand year one there was an attempted coup by around the in backed shia militia in bahrain right that came two years after the iranian revolution in one nine hundred seventy nine if you are a hereditary sunny monarch in this part of the world you cut your teeth right on the iranian revolution and everything that flowed from that so the script you are

running is a script that's thirty years old the script the white house is running as a script that looks at what's happened in egypt what's happened in tunisia there's hope for. more pluralistic hopefully democratic hopefully economically vibrant stable and just middle east and when they are looking at the situation in bahrain they're seeing this inherent tension between this monarchy and the legitimate interests i might say of the majority of the bahraini top elation is there any reason why seventy percent of the population shouldn't be able to elect their own prime minister or should be able to engage in more tea party politics all they've asked for is a constitutional monarchy and has won the united kingdom has won i believe the netherlands and mark have won all of those countries have done pretty well now do you think that we should completely stay out of this let's compare this to the situation that we're seeing in libya the rhetoric that we're hearing surrounding libya right i mean many would say that libya is going through a civil war the same way that we're seeing in bahrain right now even though iran

and c.d.c. has inserted themselves into it but we don't hear any talk of a no fly zone we don't necessarily hear a condemnation. of civilians people being killed well look let's take a look whenever we're looking at the situation in one middle eastern country we have to look at the facts as we understand them on the ground in that country rather than making generalizations about u.s. posture or dominance whatever else in the region as a whole the situation in libya is for lack of a better word a domestic insurrection right you have two armed factions that are going at it one faction one way it seems to be dominant the next week the other faction seems to be dominant in bahrain up until thirty six hours ago we had a largely predominantly peaceful protest movement right you have citizens in the streets not rebels it's a completely different situation legally it's a completely different situation politically it's a different situation when you look at the security the security situation the

security nexus right so we can't clearly compare one thing to the next because we don't have a full on insurrection in bahrain and the appropriate tools to use are going to be more political and diplomatic. right because we don't want to tip the balance into something that's going to look like a libya so it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing a sort of more cautious approach outwardly from the administration but let's not forget president barack hussein obama called two kings in the middle east today one in bahrain and one in saudi arabia and told to stand down ari christer i want to thank you very much for joining us and you know continue to watch this but i think there probably is a little bit of caution too because they spoke out so loudly against let's say khadafi doesn't look like it's going down what if what if we choose the wrong site somewhere else thanks so much pleasure to see again now still to come tonight on senator thinks of the reason our times to spread democracy to other countries as failed is because they don't believe in the bible he tells on this really shocking statement tonight through all time.